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WIth all the discussion about the AI bubble, AI hype, and mass automation displacement, Ford Motor Company has a message for the U.S. economy: Human experience matters.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Over the last three years, the company has hired 350 veteran engineers\u2014dubbed \u201cgray beards\u201d internally and made up of both former Ford employees and workers from suppliers\u2014to help train junior staff and reprogram ineffective artificial intelligence tools. It\u2019s because the company realized what AI is and isn\u2019t good for.<\/p>\n
\u201cArtificial intelligence is a fantastic tool, but it\u2019s only as good as the information you use to train it,\u201d Charles Poon, Ford\u2019s vice president of vehicle hardware engineering, told reporters last week. \u201cOver prior years, we didn\u2019t pay as much attention as we should have to the experience of our most knowledgeable engineers that have been with us through many product cycles.\u201d<\/p>\n
By mid-2024, recalls were costing Ford $4.8 billion per year. Last July, the company notched the superlative as the automaker with the most recalls ever issued in a single year with 90, including an estimated $570 million charge for nearly 700,000 crossover vehicles.<\/p>\n
Since then, the company has made a concerted effort to improve quality control and now ranks No. 1 among mainstream brands in the most recent JD Power Initial Quality Survey published on Thursday. Last year, Ford ranked 10th for quality. The company attributes increases in quality to a \u201cculture change\u201d emphasizing the role of human workers.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have AI tools for vision systems,\u201d Ford CEO Jim Farley told Bloomberg TV. \u201cBut most of all, it\u2019s just old-fashioned hard work of our team members all working together to pay attention to the very small details that will make a difference between a perfectly built Ford and an okay-built Toyota. It\u2019s just an incredible attention to every single detail.\u201d<\/p>\n
AI has increasingly shown it can increase productivity of certain activities, but is only making meaningful gains for companies if they are able to articulate a clear vision around how it should be deployed and augment the work of human employees. Moreover, tech executives like Bryan Catanzaro, Nvidia\u2019s vice president of applied deep learning, has said the cost of AI still far exceeds that of human labor, suggesting that even as companies continue to deploy automation, the role of human workers to both guide that technology\u2014and ensure its proliferation\u2014are more important than ever.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This has been a struggle across the Fortune 500 since the influential (and contested) MIT study in 2025 that only 5% of companies were seeing a meaningful return on investment from generative AI pilots. Other surveys have found similar splits between the rate of AI adoption and the meaningful results from it. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s a point Ford has been making for years: If you want automation to be successful, hire smart humans first.<\/p>\n
\u201cAI is a powerful tool for catching potential quality issues but it\u2019s only as good as the people using it,\u201d a Ford spokesperson told Fortune<\/em> in a statement. \u201cThat\u2019s why we have hired more than 350 experienced tech specialists to work alongside newer team members. By combining AI\u2019s processing power and pattern recognition with decades of human engineering experience, we\u2019re identifying potential issues and designing quality into our vehicles from day one while teaching the next generation to prevent problems before they ever start.\u201d<\/p>\n Farley has long warned about the dearth of blue-collar workers creating a crisis in the \u201cessential economy,\u201d slowing down the build-out of key sectors such as the automotive industry, as well as the expansion of AI infrastructure. He previously said the country is short 600,000 factory workers and 500,000 construction workers right now, attributing the slimming labor force to a lack of awareness of a shortage.<\/p>\n \u201cOn the surface, this looks like a people problem, and most are,\u201d Farley told Axios last year. \u201cBut it\u2019s actually not that simple. It\u2019s an awareness problem. It\u2019s a societal problem.\u201d<\/p>\n The CEO has advocated for policy changes to incentivize greater blue-collar job fulfillment, including greater investments in vocations training and apprenticeships, as well as pro-trade polities that grow the essential economy.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we are successful\u2014when we are successful\u2014we\u2019ll take on bigger, higher-class problems,\u201d he said. \u201cRight now, the problems we\u2019re trying to solve are pretty practical: I need 6,000 technicians in my dealerships on Monday morning.\u201d<\/p>\n However, as Ford and the automotive industry blend automation and human workforce together, there may be other challenges ahead. Earlier this month, UAW, among the largest unions in North America representing autoworkers, expressed concern for the future of humans in the industry amid waves of automation. UAW president Shawn Fain argued at the union\u2019s conference that workers should share in the financial gains automakers reap in automation-related productivity gains.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to be clear about this: We are in a fight for humanity,\u201d Fain said. \u201cThe fruits of our labor have multiplied like never before, but workers aren\u2019t reaping the harvest. And if AI continues to be used as an accessory to that crime, it has to be stopped. It doesn\u2019t have to be this way; in a just society, when workers create more value, they see more of the benefit.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Ford COO Kumar Galhotra, the veteran engineers responsible for its quality problem turnaround \u201chunt for failure points before a part ever reaches the plant floor,\u201d he said at last week\u2019s press meeting. Today, the technical specialists run mandatory meetings to address quality concerns, as well as reprogram AI tools to counter glitches before they occur.\u00a0<\/p>\n To be sure, Ford continues to encounter issues with recalls, expecting more than $1 billion in warranty and material costs this year. These costs are a lagging metric, according to Galhotra, and are expected to decrease over time. The company also hopes to save $1 billion in costs this year.<\/p>\n \u201cBecause we\u2019re doing more to prevent issues upfront, we believe these recall numbers are going to steadily come down with the newer vehicles,\u201d he said. \u201cI can\u2019t give you a very specific date on when the number will turn.\u201d<\/p>\n Farley said Ford is already making up some of the money previously lost because of quality issues.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re seeing our warranty coverages come down. We\u2019re seeing our recall costs come down,\u201d he said. \u201cThese are all contributing to literally hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars of a tailwind for Ford on cost.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n #Ford #rehired #gray #beard #engineers #realized #wasnt #capable #human #jobs<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" WIth all the discussion about the AI bubble, AI hype, and mass automation displacement, Ford Motor Company has a message for the U.S. economy: Human experience matters.\u00a0 Over the last… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":9765,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[328,3690,11689,3347,6921,2936,3761,10631,334,430,11690,11688,6405],"class_list":["post-9764","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-news","tag-automation","tag-autos","tag-beard","tag-capable","tag-engineers","tag-ford","tag-ford-motor","tag-gray","tag-human","tag-jobs","tag-realized","tag-rehired","tag-wasnt"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9764","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9764"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9764\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/9765"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9764"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9764"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9764"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Ford\u2019s repeated calls for more human workers<\/strong><\/h2>\n
How Ford orchestrated its quality turnaround<\/strong><\/h2>\n